THE FLOWER OF GLOSTER by Temple Thurston 1912
‘…desolate though the Thames and Severn may now be, it has such beauties as I shall ever remember … the topmost lock of the Golden Valley, where the Sapperton Tunnel pierces its dark way into the very heart of the hills … that wonderful valley of glorious gold, where in the month of May the deep woods have laid down their royal carpet of blue-bells …’
‘When you join the Thames and Severn Canal at Stroud, it is but twenty-eight miles and a few furlongs before you come to Inglesham, where the water of the canal joins the Isis and all signs of the tow-path are lost to you for ever. But those twenty-eight miles are worth a thousand for the wealth of their colour alone.
Immediately you have come to Brimscombe Basin and the high land, studded with the grey Gloucestershire houses, begins to rise at either side of the canal, it is no longer the English scenery you might expect, but like mountain villages in Switzerland, thousands of feet above the level of the sea. I have seen villages in the Apennines which reminded me of Chalford and St. Mary’s crossing. The mills and the factories with blue slate roofs make a colour against the golden distance of the Golden Valley, to which, through all those little villages on the hill-sides, you feel you are always leading, slowly and surely, like a miner who nows the day will come when he shall strike his reef. There is an aura of gold everywhere. The distance is no longer blue – that is more the colour of the nearer foreground. But away beyond it there is a mist of gold into which all tones and shadows melt like metal cast into a furnace. Mills and factories, blue slate roofs and grey houses! All this sounds impossible; but it is true!
Yet this is but the beginning of the Golden Valley, the long courtyard to that garden through which you must pass before you come to the great gates which give entrance to this deep valley of gold. And all along by the side of this paved courtyard there grow in broad white feathered masses the flowers of cow-parsnip. At one spot, on a pathway the other side of the canal, there is a door set in a wall that the path itself may continue. Here was the greatest cluster of all.’
‘Soon after Chalford, the grey houses with their blue slate roofs grew fewer in number, the hills at each side became higher; there are broader pasture fields; a stray farm or lock-house is all you can see of human habitation. In the nearer distance the dense woods spread over the rolling land and, like an army in glittering mail, with golden trappings and with coloured plumes, they march down the hill-sides to the water’s edge.
This part of the country must be the most luxuriant in the whole of England. In a half hour’s ramble through those woods … I counted seventeen sorts of wild flowers then in bloom … bluebells and orchis … cuckoo-pint … nettles, red and white … Garlic I found and primroses … violets grew so thickly … Ground ivy … forget-me-nots, king cups … lesser celandine … strawberries in blossom … the common bugle … Herb-Robert … stitchwort and salvia. I have no doubt I missed a great many more … knotted figwort … white and purple comfrey … willow herb …
And with all these jewelled flowers, imagine a valley of gold. The leaves of all the countless trees set before you in the golden flush of youth; the fields on the other bank dipped in the myriad buttercups and cowslips; the sunlight steaming on it all from a cloudless sky in May …
When I came out of those woods into the sunshine again, I could only stand and wonder …’
‘For more than three miles the canal divides the wooded hills, a band of silver drawn through the valley of gold. Lock by lock it mounts the gentle incline until it reaches the pound to Sapperton Tunnel, and at the summit spreads into a wide basin before it passes into the last lock some few hundred yards before the tunnel’s mouth.
The whole way from Stroud is almost deserted now. We only met one barge in the whole journey. An old lady with a capacious barge bonnet was standing humming quietly to herself at the tiller. That was the only boat we found on those waters. The locks are, however, good; some of them have only just been made within the last few years. But the draught of water is bad; in some places we just floated, and no more. It was stern work for Fanny then. I thought the tow-line must give way, the strain upon it was so great.
In one short pound more shallow than the rest, we came across two little boys, bathing…
After our meal we went on through the rest of this wonderful valley. It was golden to the last. Even in the water itself the weeds grew more luxuriously than I have seen in any river. In and out of the forests of trailing weed the fish moved mysteriously, like mermaids in a fairy-tale. It was all a fairy-tale beneath the water. There were dense growths, and then clear spaces on to which the sunshine fell in brilliant patches. The pen of Hans Andersen could have found many a story in that magic country beneath the still water of the canal.
At the top of the valley, looking down between the hills through a lattice-work of apple blossom, stands the Bricklayers’ Arms, a little inn with two or three houses clustered around it …
The passage through the tunnel of Sapperton, which, on a sudden bend of the canal, opens a deep black mouth into the heart of the hills … Into the grim darkness you glide and, within half an hour, are lost in a lightless cavern where the drip drip of the clammy water sounds incessantly in your ears.
Some time ago, when there was more constant traffic on this canal, there were professional leggers to carry you through; for there is no tow-path … There are no leggers now. For four hours Eynsham Harry and I lay upon our sides on the wings that are fitted for that purpose, and legged every inch of the two and three-quarter miles. It is no gentle job. Countless were the times I looked ahead to that faint pin-point of light; but by such infinite degrees did it grow larger as we neared the end, that I thought we should never reach it … A drip of shiny water on one’s face is quite enough to upset the most engrossing contemplation. I saw the pin-point of light growing to the pin’s head, and still we laboured on, only resting a few moments to light a fresh candle or take breath.
It was evening when we came out into the light again and, though the sun had set, with shadows falling everywhere, it almost dazzled me. A barge in the next lock rose above the lock’s arms, with every line cut out against the pale sky.’